


The Adventure of the Woolly Mammoth

by earlgreytea68



Series: Scotch [14]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there's a woolly mammoth in Siberia and John and Sherlock find it to be entirely beside the point. The point being that they need to Have Things Out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to all the usuals, to chicklet73 who brilliantly pinch-hit for my poor beleaguered beta, and to sensiblecat for the Britpick. 
> 
> My "Empty House" fic was fairly happy. This is basically the emotional addendum to it that really needed to happen but seemed out-of-place in the reunionfic. Anyway, you're probably going to want to at least have read "An Empty House" before you read this one.

“Don’t you want to know how I did it?” asked Sherlock. 

John looked up from the blog entry he was working on. Sherlock was sprawled on the sofa, fingers in prayer position against his lips, staring up at the ceiling. It was almost as if he hadn’t spoken at all, but John knew he had. 

He turned back to the computer in front of him. He knew exactly what Sherlock was talking about; even though, before Sherlock’s question, they hadn’t spoken for at least 45 minutes, and that last conversation had been a suggestion that John make them tea. Several suggestions. Until John finally capitulated. 

“No,” John answered, and hunted for the next couple of letters in the word he was typing. “I don’t.”

He felt Sherlock glance at him, then look back up at the ceiling, pretending indifference. “But you always want to know how I do everything.”

John said nothing, only continued to poke slowly at the keys on his keyboard. He kept up his version of typing. 

“Aren’t you typing a blog?” Sherlock persisted. “Or, I suppose I should say, painstakingly pressing keys as such a way as to approximate some form of communication that could be described as typing, at its most basic level. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

“I don’t know about how you’re characterizing it,” John said, on a slight sigh, peering at what he’d just written, “but I am typing a blog, yes.”

“A blog about me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“They’re all about me.”

“Maybe I’m talking about me this time.”

“You don’t do that. You talk about yourself by talking about other people.”

“Whereas you talk about yourself by talking about yourself,” remarked John, musingly, steadfastly typing onward. 

“You’re composing a blog entry about my return from the dead.”

“We discussed this, all of us. It’s time for the formal announcement.”

“How can you compose such a blog entry without knowing how I did it?”

John paused for a split second in his typing, then resumed. “I don’t want to know how you did it, Sherlock.”

The funny thing about Sherlock was most of the time he was the most observant person on the planet, but sometimes he seemed so incredibly blind when it came to a normal human emotion, especially one on John’s part. He apparently had no idea John was furious, because what he said next was exactly the wrong thing. What he said was, “It was impressive.”

John suddenly snapped his laptop shut, and Sherlock jumped, startled at the sharp click, and looked at him in surprise. “It wasn’t,” John snarled at him, “ _impressive_ , Sherlock. It was many, many things. It wasn’t _impressive_.”

Sherlock stared at him, then seemed to decide he should be sitting up for this conversation. “John,” he said, slowly rearranging himself on the sofa. 

John spoke over him. “It was devastating, and it was horrifying, and it was, frankly, cruel. But it wasn’t impressive.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at him. “Are you angry with me?” he asked, in disbelief. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” mocked John, sweeping an arm toward Sherlock, “the world’s only consulting detective.”

“This morning you woke me up by kissing me, with tongue, and a hand down my pants: Not indicative of being angry with me. Three hours ago, fellatio in the shower: Not indicative of being angry with me. Thirty-seven minutes ago, you made me tea: Not indicative of being angry with me.” He ticked these points off on his fingers, as if it were a normal list. 

John could feel that he was blushing, which irritated him. He focused on the last point. “I only made you tea because you wouldn’t stop whingeing about it.”

“Oh, so it was the tea that made you angry with me?”

“It wasn’t the _tea_ , Sherlock.”

“I can document more examples of behavior on your part indicating no anger toward me—”

“I do not want a recap of our sexual encounters. I don’t want to discuss any of this any further.”

He had never yet had a girlfriend who would let him drop an argument that way. Maybe that was the nice thing about having a boyfriend instead, or at least having Sherlock Holmes as a boyfriend, because he said, as if the conversation were boring him, “Fine,” and lay back down on the sofa. 

No wonder girlfriends never let him drop it, because it turned out he didn’t want to drop it. He wanted to have it out. He wanted to shout at Sherlock that _yes_ , he was angry with him; that Sherlock seemed to have no idea what it was like to think that your best friend was dead, for eight whole months; and that he’d died before you’d been able to fully grasp that it was possible he was the love of your life. And, worse than that, that he’d leaped to his death directly in front of you, on the _phone_ with you. But he’d been the one to say he didn’t want to discuss it any further, and Sherlock was apparently willing to take that at face value. 

John frowned and crossed his arms in his chair and leaned back and glared at Sherlock. 

The door opened and shut downstairs, and Sherlock said, to the ceiling, “Mycroft.”

Which was indeed who walked in, with a cursory knock at the open lounge door with the base of his umbrella. 

“Why do you bother to knock?” asked Sherlock, without looking at him. “You never ring the bell.”

Mycroft looked from Sherlock to John, who was still glaring at Sherlock, and caught the mood of the room effortlessly. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, with the air of knowing the answer was yes.

“No,” said Sherlock, and sat up. “John doesn’t want to discuss it any further. What is it?”

Mycroft glanced at John with his eyebrows raised, but John kept frowning thunderously at Sherlock so Mycroft gave his typical ghost of a shrug and sat in John’s chair by the fireplace, crossing his legs and arranging his umbrella. “I thought you might like a case. It would be a nice way to get the blog going again.”

“A case,” echoed Sherlock. “I’m not going to start a war for you, Mycroft.”

“Who said anything about a war?”

“This has to do with the woolly mammoth wandering around Siberia, no doubt a Baskerville experiment gone wrong, and you’d like me to do something in such a way as to blame the Russians for the woolly mammoth.”

Mycroft paused, which was telling. John couldn’t help looking at him in surprise, because, if Sherlock was right, that was kind of an amazing story. “That would hardly start a _war_ ,” Mycroft said. 

“Hang on,” John interjected. “There really is a woolly mammoth in Siberia?”

“Not officially,” said Mycroft. 

“Is the Loch Ness Monster a Baskerville experiment gone awry, too? What about Bigfoot?” asked John. 

Mycroft frowned at him, then looked at Sherlock. “Will you help with the woolly mammoth?”

“No. Go and get a team of wildlife experts to capture the thing for you, if that’s what you want.”

“I want to know how it got there in the first place.”

“You’ve a leak somewhere. Obviously, someone at Baskerville smuggled the DNA to someone in Russia. And apparently the Russians have a Baskerville of their own. But I plan not to worry too much about that, knowing my dear brother is aware of it now and will do all he can to keep us safe. Figure out the leak on your own, that’s dull.”

“How would we publicize that anyway?” John said. “What sort of blog entry would that make?”

“The capture of a woolly mammoth?” said Mycroft. “You don’t think that would make for an interesting blog entry? Obviously, the rest of it would stay between us.”

“I don’t capture animals, prehistoric or otherwise,” Sherlock announced, with finality. “Now go away.” He collapsed back onto the sofa. 

“Fine,” said Myrcoft, and stood. “I will leave you to your domestic squabble.”

Which annoyed John, who said, once he’d heard the door close behind Mycroft, “I’m going out.”

Sherlock looked at him in alarm. “Where are you going?”

“We’re out of milk,” John told him, shortly. “You finished the last of it with your tea.”

***

Sherlock did not like for John to be angry. Because, most of the time, John was angry about things that completely bewildered Sherlock. Well, the _things_ didn’t bewilder Sherlock, but reacting to them with anger bewildered Sherlock. John didn’t get angry very often; it was one of the best things about him, that he didn’t let minutia bother him as much as _people_ might. But, when he did get angry, it was always over a matter of principle, and Sherlock thought principle was tedious at best. _People_ wasted so much time and energy on principle, and John was normally so much cleverer than _people_ that Sherlock couldn’t help but be thrown whenever he wasn’t, whenever he got himself tangled up with principle and then got angry with him over things Sherlock couldn’t change and wouldn’t change even if he could because changing would be illogical. John’s anger was always the result of a breakdown in logic and a surfeit of emotion. Sherlock didn’t mind certain types of emotion on John’s part. He quite liked when John was feeling fond and good-humored and indulgent, liked especially when John looked at him with his eyes bright with affection, liked when John nuzzled at his neck contentedly or kissed him back energetically or giggled at something Sherlock had said. Sherlock liked all those emotions of John’s very, very much. 

Sherlock just did not like when John was angry. 

He couldn’t very well just sit in the lounge brooding about why John was angry. That was not productive in any way. His mind would run ‘round in circles until he’d be frantic with the annoyance of it all. And, if John was angry, Sherlock was aware the most foolish thing he could do would be to whip himself into a state of annoyance in response. It would be better to be pleasant and unruffled, it would defuse John’s anger. John was that sort. If Sherlock was especially charming when John got back, maybe John would even feel guilty over being angry in the first place. 

So Sherlock buried himself in the experiment he was using the kitchen table for currently, and when John came back from the shop with milk and whatever else he’d seen fit to purchase, Sherlock was surrounded by test tubes and leaning over a microscope. 

John did not say hello when he walked in. He went straight to the refrigerator and put the milk away. He emptied the rest of the bags systematically and sighed when he opened one of the cupboards and found an ant farm in it, but he didn’t say anything to Sherlock. Which was a very bad sign. 

“Hello,” Sherlock offered, watching him. 

“Hi,” John responded, perfunctorily, and Sherlock knew he said it because he didn’t want to be childish; John hated being childish whereas Sherlock thought it was quite useful in many circumstances. 

Sherlock wondered what he should say next. He didn’t want to ask why John was angry, because he’d rather John just forget that he was angry at all. He was a bit annoyed that John hadn’t forgotten yet. 

John said, without looking at him, as he was walking out of the kitchen, “I’m going to bed.”

Sherlock was surprised. He looked at his watch, even though he knew what time it was, and it was early for bed. If John hadn’t been angry, Sherlock would have taken it as an invitation, but John was very clearly still angry, and Sherlock didn’t think it was a good idea to bring up sex at the moment. 

“John,” Sherlock said, before John could completely exit the kitchen, and John paused, although he still didn’t look at him, and Sherlock scrambled for something to say, anything. He went for the first thing that came into his head. “If you’d like us to take the woolly mammoth case, I can phone Mycroft and—”

“I don’t want us to take the woolly mammoth case,” said John, wearily. “Good night.” 

Sherlock frowned after him and then, not knowing what to do, went back to his experiment. Eventually he finished with as much as he could get done. It needed time now, and that meant he had nothing left to do with himself. He paced the lounge for a bit. He would have played the violin but it was now late and it would not help John’s anger if he woke him up by playing the violin. He could have gone to bed himself, but John had gone to his own room, which he had not done once since they had moved back to Baker Street together, and Sherlock hated the idea of his bed being empty. He had never been good at sleeping alone, which was one of those things he had no real biological explanation for and so hated about himself, but it was true. Plus, he was too restless to sleep at the moment anyway, even if he’d wanted to brave his empty bed. 

He wandered through the lounge, frowning at books. John read for pleasure all the time, maybe he could, too. But none of the books seemed the slightest bit interesting. He was standing by the fireplace frowning at the telly and wondering whether turning it on would disturb John when John appeared in the doorway of the lounge. He looked rumpled and tousled and also annoyed, so apparently he was still angry. 

Nevertheless, he looked at Sherlock and sighed, after a second, “Come to bed.” Then he walked out of the doorway. 

Sherlock hesitated in surprise, then followed him. He had gone into Sherlock’s bedroom, and he was already settled under the covers on the side of the bed he’d commandeered, his head buried in the pillow and turned away from Sherlock. 

“Change out of your suit,” he mumbled at him. “You know I hate it when you sleep in your clothes.”

“John,” Sherlock began, staring at his form in his bed and trying to determine what this was, wishing John were facing his direction so he could try to read his expression. 

“Don’t talk,” said John. “Don’t say another word. I don’t want you to make things worse. Just be quiet. And come to bed.” John paused. “Please.”

Sherlock considered, then shed his suit and found pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. John was not asleep when he slid into bed, but he was pretending to be. Sherlock could tell the difference. He let him pretend, lying carefully next to him and not daring to move for fear it would, as John had said, make things worse. Eventually John stopped pretending and fell asleep for real, his breaths evening out. Normally this was Sherlock’s favorite part of any night, when John fell asleep and he could unabashedly lay in the moonlight cast over the bed and study him, because Sherlock felt as if he never got to look at John long enough, never really got his fill of the examination of his face. Sherlock listened to him breathe and watched him sleep and felt fear, which he had become more and more acquainted with over the past nine months of his life and which he really detested, every time it reared its head. He detested it now, watching John sleep and trying to regard his fear with detachment, trying to analyze it and strip it of its cold teeth, but it didn’t work. John was angry with him. And everything Sherlock was was all tangled up with John; he couldn’t imagine what he would do if this fragile and incomprehensible thing with John fell to pieces around him. He couldn’t imagine how he would ever go back to the clawing hollowness that life had been before John; he couldn’t imagine how he would _survive_ it. 

Slowly, testing, Sherlock shifted closer to John, close enough to nudge their shoulders together, to line up their legs. John turned into him sleepily, fitting against him automatically, snuggling his head into the curve of his shoulder, and Sherlock took a shuddering breath of relief and kissed his temple cautiously, not wanting to wake him, just wanting to rest his lips against him, to breathe into his skin. 

John slept. Sherlock waited for dawn, memorizing.


	2. Chapter 2

John woke curled into Sherlock, with sunlight streaming over the bed. For a moment, it was almost like a normal morning, and John wished it would stay that way, wished his mind wouldn’t repeat Sherlock’s voice, over and over, pronouncing his fake death _impressive_. He really didn’t want to be angry, and he’d been telling himself not to be. Sherlock was Sherlock, and what could you do? Except that Sherlock had broken his _heart_ , and he had deemed it _impressive_. 

Of course, John had still been unable to sleep without him, had eventually gone to fetch him just because he couldn’t shake the fear that otherwise something might happen to him, that he might wake and find him gone again. John was angry at Sherlock and had forgiven Sherlock all at the same time, and it was exhausting. 

John sat up and looked down at Sherlock. His eyes were closed, his eyelashes smudges against his pale, dramatic cheekbones. He was sleeping, or pretending to be sleeping. Either way. John sighed and considered and then rolled himself out of bed. He had no real plan for the day, but he might as well get up and face it. 

He took a shower, and when he emerged Sherlock was no longer in bed. He was making some sort of mess in the kitchen, and John avoided the room in favor of the lounge, where there was a chill in the air, so he crouched down to make a fire, which was when Mrs. Hudson came hurrying up the stairs, calling for Sherlock. 

“I know, Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock’s voice responded, calmly, from the kitchen. 

John leaned away from the fire. “Know what?”

Sherlock’s head was lost inside the refrigerator. “Look outside,” he answered, laconically. 

So John stood up and parted the curtain to look out the window. Which was when a small sea of cameras immediately started flashing in his direction. Startled, he dropped the curtain back into place and took a step back. “What the hell is that?”

“It seems,” said Sherlock, coming into the lounge with a tea tray, “that the news is out.”

John was busy staring at the tea tray. “Did you make tea?” he asked in disbelief. 

Sherlock looked uncomfortable. “Sometimes I make tea,” he said. 

“No, you don’t,” said Mrs. Hudson. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson, I think I hear your phone ringing,” Sherlock told her. 

“Do you? I don’t hear any—”

“Quite sure, off you go now.” Sherlock nudged her out of the lounge and closed the door behind her. 

“That was rude,” John told him. 

“But I just made tea, so by my calculations I needed to be a bit rude in order to restore the balance of the universe.”

“And now you’re making jokes,” said John. “I don’t like this.”

“I’m… _apologizing_ ,” said Sherlock, as if the word were a particularly tricky one, and sat in his chair and poured out the tea. 

John lifted his eyebrows at him. “For what?”

Sherlock didn’t answer. “We’re going to be stuck inside with each other today; let’s make it pleasant,” he offered. 

“You have no idea why I’m angry with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I know why you’re angry.” Sherlock sipped his tea. “Are you still angry?”

Always. Or never. It was unclear. John changed the subject and gestured to the window. “How did they find out you’re alive? Was it Mycroft?”

“No. To be honest, I’m surprised it took them this long, but then, I suppose I was underestimating their stupidity. You moved back into Baker Street, and I haven’t been exactly keeping to the shadows; it was really only a matter of time.”

“Only a matter of time before they concluded you were back from the dead,” said John, flatly. 

“I’m sure they reached a number of incorrect conclusions first. It’s possible that they might think I’m just a mysteriously identical cousin or some other trope from a Dickens novel. Body doubles. I imagine that would be their guess. I’m looking forward to reading their theories, really.”

John stared at him. Then he said, “Okay. I’m still angry.”

Sherlock put his teacup down and regarded him steadily. “Tell me what this is about.”

“I thought you knew.”

“I was lying.”

“You don’t say. It wasn’t one of your better lies, you know. Because you are a _very_ good liar. I know all about what an _excellent_ liar you are.”

Sherlock looked uncertain, which made John even more furious. How, he wanted to demand, could he not _know_ what this was about? “When did I lie to you?” Sherlock asked, and he seemed genuinely confused. 

John thought he might strangle him. “ _When you told me you were a fraud, said good-bye, and made me watch you leap off a building to what you knew I would think was your death_ ,” he shouted at him. 

“Is that what this is about?” said Sherlock. 

John was so taken aback by that reaction that he threw up his hands and paced an angry little circle around the room. “You are,” he remarked, “in your head, the cleverest human being on the planet. How can you not know what this is about?”

“John, I had to—”

“Shut up,” John told him. “Just shut up. It isn’t going to help you, whatever justification you thought you had. I know you thought you had to. I know you thought it was your only option. I don’t really care why you did it, Sherlock. The reason you did it is irrelevant to me.” He stopped pacing, turned to Sherlock, slashing through the air with his hands in angry gestures, because Sherlock looked politely interested in his outburst and nothing more, and that only increased his fury. “I spent eight months thinking you were _dead_ ,” John reminded him. 

“I know,” said Sherlock, and looked about to say more but John cut him off. 

“No. You don’t know. You seem to think it was a bloody holiday for me. ‘Oh, delightful, Sherlock’s dead, it’ll be nice and refreshing not to come home to a bathtub filled with feet.’”

“Well, wasn’t it?” Sherlock asked, mildly. 

“No, it wasn’t!”

“I’m going to remind you of that the next time you complain about the bathtub being filled with feet.” 

“This isn’t a joke!” John informed him, crossly, shouting at him from across the room. 

Sherlock’s face hardened. “No, it isn’t. Of course it’s not. I never thought it was. You seem to think I pulled the whole thing off as if it were a lark and then I gallivanted around the world for a bit like some sort of demented Grand Tour. And that the hardest thing about the whole experience for me was that I didn’t get to send you any postcards.”

“I’m not saying it was a picnic for you, but I am saying that it’s clear to me that you have _no idea_ what it was like here for me.”

“Then possibly you ought to tell me,” Sherlock said, crisply. “I may be quite clever, but, all appearances to the contrary, I have never been a mind-reader.”

“You’ve always given a good impression of it.”

“Because you don’t usually deliberately _hide_ things from me, John,” he pointed out, and there was actually hurt in his tone. 

John was astonished at the idea that _Sherlock_ thought he was the hurt party in this transaction. “It shouldn’t take a great deductive mind to know that the eight months without you were hell for me.”

“Tell me,” said Sherlock, stiff and determined, his pale eyes sharp on his face. “Tell me all the things you think I don’t know.”

John leaned on the back of his chair and looked at Sherlock, who looked calm in comparison but John could see the tension in the way he was sitting. “You phoned me to tell me that you were going to kill yourself, Sherlock. And then you made me watch you while you did it. I spent eight months thinking that you took your own life and that I did nothing to stop it, just stood and watched it happen. You were _everything_ to me, and you _knew_ that you were, and you told me good-bye and jumped to your death and I saw it every single time I closed my eyes.” John pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, seeing it again, remembering every single sleepless night. “I woke up, over and over, in the middle of trying to save you, and never being able to do it. Always there was a wrist with no pulse and eyes that didn’t see me and blood--” John’s voice broke. He dropped his hands and looked at Sherlock, whose expression was unreadable. “Did you not think,” John demanded, “did you not think _even once_ , what it was going to do to me?”

“Of course I did,” he said, and he sounded tired. 

“How? How could you have thought of it and still done it to me? I could never have done it to you.”

“That isn’t true,” Sherlock denied. 

“Yes. It is.”

“I was saving your life. You would have done the same for me. For God’s sake, John, you’d already tried to, with Moriarty, the first time, by the pool. The difference was that I was clever enough to die for you without _actually_ dying for you.”

“Oh,” said John, feeling almost hysterical. “Yes. That’s right. How silly of me. That’s the difference between us. You’re cleverer than I am. How could I have forgotten?”

“I’m just pointing out that this is hypocritical of you.”

John looked at him for a long moment, and the truth was that he loved him, beyond reason or explanation, in a way he could never have predicted and would never be able to deny, but it was also true that he would never fully understand him. Sherlock affected him like the ocean, violent and swirling and capable of drowning him. And, meanwhile, his effect on Sherlock was virtually undetectable. “Yes,” he allowed. “All right. I would have died for you. I still would. That comes as no surprise to either of us, I think. I’m just saying, I don’t think what you did was _clever_ , Sherlock. I don’t think it makes you _cleverer_ than me, I think it makes you capable of a cruelty that I find terrifying. I don’t want to know how you did it, Sherlock. I don’t think it was impressive. I think it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. And I don’t want you to brag to me about how brilliantly you executed the shattering of John Watson. Go and brag to them, they want to hear all about it.” John nodded toward the window.

“I don’t want to tell them. I don’t care what they think. I only care what _you_ think.”

“Then you’re making a terrible mess of things, aren’t you?”

Sherlock hesitated, studying him. John could tell he was thinking very hard, and he was curious what he was thinking about, curious what he would say next. 

He was surprised when what Sherlock said next was, “Would you sit down? Please?”

It was a genuinely polite _please_ , so unusual in and of itself that John did as he requested, even though he didn’t want to sit. He wanted to pace around the room; he was full of angry energy. 

“Are you sure you don’t want tea?” Sherlock asked, with an edge of hopefulness, as if maybe the whole storm had blown over. 

John stood. “Sherlock—”

“No,” Sherlock said. “Sit down. Please. I just meant…” Sherlock trailed off. He put his teacup down and tapped his fingers against each other and looked thoughtful, his eyes on the fire, and John sat, slowly, waiting. “I…” said Sherlock, eventually, his eyes still on the fire, and then he tried again. “I…couldn’t imagine a world without John Watson.” He looked at him suddenly, and his expression was honest and a bit raw and John had never quite seen him look that way. “I couldn’t. I tried to and I…I knew I was leaving you damaged. You’re wrong, to think I knew quite the extent to which you thought of me, but I knew that I was, at least, important to you, and I knew it would hurt you, and I even knew you might hate me for it, but I…I would rather the world have John Watson the way I left you than have no John Watson at all. I couldn’t bear the idea of it, John. I didn’t know how I was ever supposed to do anything ever again in a world without _you_. The truth about us, which I think you still don’t realize, is that you are much stronger than I am, and I have always known that. You _think_ me very strong, much stronger than I am, and that’s as addictive as any other substance I’ve tried. _You’re_ as addictive as any other substance I’ve ever tried, and the way you look at me is… But you’re wrong about me, in almost every way. I knew you would eventually be fine. I knew you would keep getting up in the morning, in a world without Sherlock Holmes, that you’d land on your feet and you’d find your way through, because you’ve done it, again and again, in your life. _I_ , however--I would lose you and I would…stop. I didn’t have a choice, John. If one of us had to learn to live without the other, it had to be you. That’s just a matter of logic.”

John stared at him, turning it over in his head, trying to make sense of it. His instinct was to protest, and he started to, leaning forward in his chair and saying, “Sherlock—”

“No.” Sherlock cut him off and actually laughed, although it was thin and humorless. “Your faith in me is so astonishing. So much more than I realized. You want to think such great things about me, and most of the time I am quite willing to let you do so, but in this one instance you must accept the truth of what I’m telling you. I did it to save your life, because I had to, and the only way I was able to do it to you was because I thought that maybe, possibly, eventually, when I came back, you might be happy to see me and you might forget all about it. Which, it turns out, was true for a little while.”

John swallowed and looked across at Sherlock in the chair, swallowed up in his dressing gown, looking uncertain and annoyed at the uncertainty. “What do you imagine I’m going to do now?” John asked, because Sherlock’s uncertainty surprised him. 

“I have no idea,” he said, and his face suddenly lost its uncertainty, regained its determination. “But I do know this: I saved us both, Holmes and Watson; we’ve survived for a second act together. And I _am_ proud of that. It _was_ impressive. I have no idea what comes next, I never really have, but I saved your life and I didn’t lose mine in the process and I refuse to regret that. Can’t you see that?”

The truth was that John did see that. The alternative of Sherlock’s plan would have been Sherlock’s actual death, and John much preferred this fake death, even with the ache of the betrayal that had come along with it. In the end, he still had Sherlock. And maybe this was the advantage of being loved by Sherlock Holmes. He would always choose to keep them safe, even if it meant cutting them each to the quick to accomplish it. There was, actually, a modicum of comfort there, in the idea that Sherlock would never stop fighting for them, even faced with impossible choices. 

“I never really thought you were dead,” John said, hoarsely. 

Sherlock sent him a ghost of a smile. “I know.”

“My therapist said I was living in an unhealthy fantasy world, but I just kept saying that she didn’t know _you_.”

“I couldn’t afford to have you come looking for me, not before it was safe, and I tried so hard to shatter that faith you have in me, but you never lost it.” Sherlock sounded amazed by this. 

“You’re an idiot,” John told him. 

Sherlock blinked at him in surprise. 

“It isn’t _faith_ in you.” He moved suddenly, sliding off his chair and kneeling in front of Sherlock’s, drawn up to his full height and tugging at Sherlock’s dressing gown to bring him closer. “Sherlock Holmes,” he said, “I am in love with you.”

Sherlock’s cheeks went pink and his bow of a mouth formed a pretty _o_ and John thought that, for the rest of his life, he would cherish this picture of Sherlock, surprised at being told what to the rest of the world was the most obvious thing ever. 

“I am always going to think better of you than you think of yourself,” John continued, watching with fascination the swirl of emotions in Sherlock’s eyes, because Sherlock’s eyes were seldom so full. “Which, I’ll have you know, you make a tall order. But it’s true. Because I’m in love with you. Which I didn’t get a chance to tell you before you went and leaped off a building in front of me, so I’m telling you it now.”

Sherlock looked vaguely strangled, as if John’s hands were on his windpipe instead of on the collar of his dressing gown. “Are you sure about this?” he gasped, as if he didn’t have access to enough air. 

John rather thought this was the best thing he’d ever done; he should have told Sherlock he loved him long before this. He’d held back out of some idea that Sherlock wouldn’t appreciate the obvious display of _sentiment_ , but he liked Sherlock this off-balance, which was always so difficult to achieve. “Ask me a more specific question,” he suggested, and leaned forward and nipped under Sherlock’s right ear. 

“More specific?” echoed Sherlock, and tilted his head so John could more easily access his neck. 

“Am I sure I love you?” John licked, bit, licked again, and listened to Sherlock’s quickening breath. “Yes. That I am absolutely sure about. Am I sure loving you is a good idea?” John tugged slightly on Sherlock’s dressing gown and T-shirt so he could plant a line of kisses along Sherlock’s collarbone, moving gradually across his chest. “No,” he said, as he did so. “I actually think it might be a terrible idea.” He paused for a second at Sherlock’s Adam’s apple, which was a reminder that he was kissing a man and not a woman, and a pleasant reminder that he was kissing _Sherlock_. Then he lifted his head, looked into Sherlock’s stunned and flushed face. “After all,” he told him, with a grin, “you fill the bathtub with feet.”

He kissed him, and Sherlock fisted his hands into the jumper John was wearing and kissed him back in that whole-hearted way he had. He tried to pull John up and over him, which would have required an awkward angle on John’s part, so John instead pulled back and forced Sherlock to slide off the chair, landing in a tangled heap with him on the floor and John caught up a fistful of Sherlock’s hair to hold him into place and clasped his other hand loosely around Sherlock’s wrist, tracking the jump of his pulse as he kissed him slowly, persuasively, single-mindedly, until eventually Sherlock gave in and moaned, which made John smile. 

He drew back and threaded the hand at Sherlock’s wrist into his hand, clasping loosely and using his other hand to walk his fingers over Sherlock’s scalp. Sherlock, looking thoroughly kissed in a way that made John inordinately pleased, kept his eyes closed and leaned into his touch. 

“Tell me how illogical I’m being,” John told him. 

“Incredibly illogical,” Sherlock said, but, as it came out sounding like a purr, John took no offense. 

He smiled and kissed him again because he couldn’t resist it, drawing back before Sherlock could fully respond. “How?”

“Well,” said Sherlock, and, his eyes still closed, lifted their joined hands and brushed a kiss over John’s knuckles. “For starters, you’re a heterosexual male.”

“Yes,” John allowed, “but I think I’m getting better at all this.”

Sherlock unclasped their hands and pressed an open kiss into John’s palm. “You’ve made progress,” he said. 

John laughed and leaned against him, pressing into him, and Sherlock’s eyes opened, bright with arousal, a look John recognized now, which was one of the more astonishing things about his recent life. “I’ll have to keep practicing,” John promised him. 

He had been expecting a flirtatious rejoinder, something along the lines of _I look forward to it_ , was already leaning forward to kiss the sentence out of him, when Sherlock surprised him by saying, “I really am incredibly difficult to live with.”

John paused, pulling back, and said, in confusion, “What?”

“You’re being so illogical,” Sherlock rushed out. “You do this all the time; you let emotion cloud your logic. I’m impossible to live with; everyone knows that.”

“I’ve done it for a while now,” John pointed out. 

“Yes, but that’s because you’re _illogical_ and make no sense, John.”

John looked at him for a moment, and then he smiled. “That drives you absolutely mad about me, doesn’t it?”

“ _Yes_ ,” said Sherlock, emphatically. “Absolutely _mad_.”

“You can’t make me make sense, can you?” persisted John, drifting closer. 

“You _don’t_ make sense,” Sherlock insisted, in response. 

“Like a woolly mammoth in Siberia.”

“No, _that_ makes sense; that, I understand fully and completely. _You_ are just baffling. You are far more nonsensical than a woolly mammoth in Siberia.”

“And you love that desperately about me,” John assured him, amused and knowing and it was fine with him if Sherlock never said it out loud, because John _knew_. 

Sherlock looked at a loss for words, and John relished the moment. He waited for Sherlock to find a response. 

Sherlock said, finally, carefully, “I do.” And then, swiftly on its heels, “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to be a little more logical when you—”

“Shut up,” said John, “you’re ruining the moment,” and kissed him.


End file.
